[tsavoie]

Hi,
I'm still new to PS7 but am attempting to touch up some senior pictures of my daughter. I've used some excellent advice on skin smoothing from this forum already, thanks alot! However, this one has me stumped. This picture, taken on grass in front of a river, shows an square of discolored grass around her. I cropped the picture for this forum but it's quite visible in front and going around the back of her. What's the best way to correct the color of the grass to match the rest?

[Cassidy]

Easiest way is to create a new blank layer and using the colour picker, select an area of green in the background and then using approx a 27% opacity, paint the foreground dead looking grass

[Panpan]

You have a choice of techniques. You can use Cassidy's method , the clone tool or a feathered layer of green grass copied over the brown.

I used the patch tool in this case.

Pierre

[Cassidy]

Pierre, yours looks far more natural

[12fretter]

I added a saturation layer and GREATLY oversaturated the image. Then masked off the entire image, change to a brush and white to paint the saturation just on the grass. Now back the saturation off and change the hue on the layer adjustment till it looks like what you want.

[Duv]

The image looked a little flat to me so I pumped up the contrast a bit in the L channel.

Filter>Pattern Maker. Selected area of light grass behind girl, saved pattern then "canceled" filter. Selected brown grass area. Tools>Pattern Clone, selected pattern and painted over selected area. Change opacity to suit.

Cheers

Dave

[Nanls]

I duped the original layer and then added another empty layer on top. I selected the healing tool checked on "use all layers" mode: "replace" and use the healing tool to fill in the grass on the new layer, sampling from the dupped layer. From there I lowered the oppacity of the top layer to 93% and merged layers. From here you can saturated or make a number of color changes if you like.
~nancy~

[Duv]

Here's another rendition. Same contrast builder as before and used Replace Color after selecting the grass as per selection mask.

Dave

[realaqu]

my work

realaqu

[Nanls]

Tsavoie, Maybe I misinterpreted the request. You stated," This picture, taken on grass in front of a river, shows an square of discolored grass around her." And then ask, "What's the best way to correct the color of the grass to match the rest?" I believe the end result you are seeking is to make the discolored strips of grass match the rest of the grass???? yes? no?
~Nancy~

[Klaatu Baradda]

Originally Posted by tsavoie

What's the best way to correct the color of the grass to match the rest?

Greetings tsavoie,
The simplest way is to grab the Paint Brush and use alt/opt+click (Eyedropper Tool) to color sample some green grass behind your daughter. Now go to the Options Bar at the top and change the brush's Mode to Color and set it's Opacity to about 10-20%. Then just start painting over the brown grass. What will happen is the color will change to green without affecting the grass "structure."
You can then use the Burn Tool (@ low opacity) to deepen some of the areas that are too light.

[philbach]

Another Way is to use photoshop's Adjustments/Match Color

You open the file. Then make a selection of the foreground brown grass and copy that to a new layer. I named that layer foreground grass layer.

Next make a selection of the grass in the background that has the proper color. Feather the selection about 10 pixels.

Select the Foreground Grass Layer in the layers palette.

Select the Image Match Color Command.
The Source is the Grassy Color Image. The source layer is the background layer.
Use Selection in source to calculate the colors.
Ignore Selection when applying the adjustment.

Since the foreground grass layer was selected in the layers palette the match color adjustment is applied there.

I've enclosed a screen dump of the Match Color Settings.

[tsavoie]

I can't believe the response to this post in 1 day! Thank you everyone for your suggestions and work on this picture. I'm trying to learn PS7 but it's certainly formidable. I was trying to match the color of the square with the rest of the surrounding grass. I guess I wasn't too clear on that point. It looks like the post from Nancy is exactly what I was looking for. All have provided options to consider.

Nanlcy I will see if I can duplicate your suggestion. I must admit though I might be back to ask for further help. Again, thanks all. I've enjoyed reading many of the posts already and look forward to more and hopefully contributing as you have in the future.